The purpose of this project is to evaluate the effects of a mindfulness-based prosocial skills training curriculum in preschool students with a larger sample in order to replicate and extend findings from initial pilot work conducted in previous years. Participants from the local public school 4-year old Kindergarten program were recruited and participated in pre …
Topic Archives:
Study of mindfulness meditation on stress reduction and attention regulation in adolescents with mild learning disabilities
This study examines the effects of a contemplative education intervention for Asian Indian adolescents living and going to high school in Singapore. The intervention aims to (a) reduce adolescents’ perceived levels of life stress and (b) enhance their ability to regulate their attention. While relaxation techniques have generally been found effective in dealing with adolescent …
Session V – Reparative Humanism: Exploring the Meaning of Ubuntu
A spirit of Ubuntu gestures towards both an embrace and a challenge that holds Others to greater moral accountability, and calls on them to be ethical subjects. Ubuntu is fundamental in both ethics and politics, and is relevant to the embodied politics of forgiveness after mass trauma and violence. I will elaborate on this notion …
Continue reading “Session V – Reparative Humanism: Exploring the Meaning of Ubuntu”
Effectiveness of the Mindfulness Education Program on children’s social-emotional competence, psychological well-being, and stress reactivity
The objective of present study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a primary prevention program—“Mindfulness Education” (ME)—a classroom-based program designed to foster children’s mindful awareness, psychological well-being, and social-emotional competencies. This study will provide an examination of multiple areas of functioning—cognitive, affective, behavioural, interpersonal and physiological through the collection of data from multiple-informants (self-reports, peer …
Cultivating Emotional Balance Classroom Project
Daily teachers are confronted with challenging child behaviors that provoke their emotional reactivity and result in stress that may affect the classroom climate and the pupils’ learning (Emmer, 1994; Sutton & Wheatley, 2003). Although teachers’ emotionally-related behavior may have powerful effects on the social and emotional development of their pupils (Hamre & Pianta, 2001), few …
Continue reading “Cultivating Emotional Balance Classroom Project”
Evaluation and Implementation: Challenges and Opportunities for Human Flourishing
Day Five brings the Dialogue to its crescendo with a discussion about implementation and evaluation of learning in the classroom. The session begins with a presentation on the biological stress response in brains that produce stress hormones that influence memory and emotion regulation. Studies are cited to demonstrate how perceiving a situation to be threatening …
Continue reading “Evaluation and Implementation: Challenges and Opportunities for Human Flourishing”
Ethics and Compassion in Education Research
The program continues with the scientific research on education and discussion of the psychology of ethical development, including moral reasoning, compassion, moral motivation, and issues of community and culture. Moving from these theories, there will be examples of how they can be translated into educational experiences. Widening the frame, Buddhist understandings of compassion are presented …
Continue reading “Ethics and Compassion in Education Research”
Meta-Awareness and Attention Training in Education Research
On Day Three, having discussed topics relevant to education practitioners, the Dialogue brings recent scientific findings into conversation with Buddhist understandings of the mind. The first presentation in this session surveys the current scientific research on meta-awareness and attention. References are made to the influence of mindfulness and compassion training in a broad range of …
Continue reading “Meta-Awareness and Attention Training in Education Research”
Social and Emotional Learning and Education in the Classroom
Continuing our discussion of social and emotional learning, Day Two begins by illustrating how social and emotional learning (SEL) has expanded over the past decade around the world and is being integrated into the very fabric of educational policy and practice. Education practitioners will explore the important question of how His Holiness’ vision of educating …
Continue reading “Social and Emotional Learning and Education in the Classroom”
Early Childhood Development and Social Emotional Learning
Day One begins with an overview of key insights derived from developmental, affective, and contemplative neuroscience on the processes of change, epigenetic influences on development, early brain development, and the nurturing of social and emotional skills over the first 20 years of life. This will provide scientific background for the Dialogue and raise fundamental questions …
Continue reading “Early Childhood Development and Social Emotional Learning”
